KARACHI, Pakistan - Video of Pakistani security forces fatally shooting an unarmed teenager and then looking on as he cries for help in a pool of blood triggered fresh anger Thursday against a military establishment still reeling from criticism after the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The footage, aired repeatedly on television, came less than a month after authorities gunned down five unarmed Chechens, including a heavily pregnant woman, at a checkpoint in Baluchistan province - an incident also caught on video. Witness testimony to a tribunal investigating the killings has severely undercut police claims that the Chechens were suicide bombers.
Pakistani security forces are often accused of using excessive force and killing unarmed civilians, typically those suspected of being criminals or militants. The criminal justice system in Pakistan is inefficient and conviction rates are very low, meaning officers sometimes kill suspects rather than attempt to prosecute them, human-rights activists say.
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Six members of the paramilitary Rangers, which is headed by an army general but controlled by the interior ministry, were arrested in connection with the killing of 18-year-old Afsar Shah on Wednesday in Karachi, according to the head of the force, Maj. Gen. Aijaz Chaudhry.
A Rangers spokesman initially said security forces detained Shah because he was trying to rob people in a park Wednesday. He said a gun was recovered from Shah and that he was shot because he was reaching for a Ranger's rifle. But Chaudhry, speaking later at a press conference, did not mention any such threat. He called the incident "deplorable."
The video of the incident aired by local Awaz TV and obtained by The Associated Press showed a man in civilian clothes wrestling a gun out of Shah's hand and kicking him toward a group of Rangers. Shah said it was just a toy gun as he pleaded with a Ranger who pointed his rifle at his neck.
"I am helpless," he said to the officers. He was pushed back and shot twice in the hand and leg.
Shah fell to the ground screaming and begged the Rangers to take him to a hospital, a longer video posted on YouTube showed. They stood by as he writhed in an expanding pool of his own blood.
Shah was eventually taken to a hospital and died shortly thereafter from blood loss, said Seemi Jamali, director at the Jinnah Post Graduate Medical College.
